Radiohead’s Coachella bunker
Radiohead debuted a film-and-art installation staged inside a 17,000‑square‑foot bunker beneath Coachella’s polo fields, turning part of the festival into a standalone, immersive art destination rather than just another stage. That kind of large-scale installation shifts how festivals compete for attention — it’s less about a single headline set and more about creating a must‑see cultural moment that people will travel for and talk about. (musically.com) (latimes.com)
Coachella did not just book Radiohead this year. It buried a 17,000-square-foot structure under the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California, and turned it into a 75-minute Radiohead film-and-art experience called “Motion Picture House: KID A MNESIA.” (musically.com) The installation sits inside a new underground bunker with 38-foot ceilings, and every Coachella ticket holder can enter it during the festival’s April 10-12 and April 17-19 weekends. (consequence.net) This is not a surprise side project pulled together for the desert. “KID A MNESIA” began as a virtual exhibition released in 2021 through Epic Games and PlayStation 5 after earlier plans for a physical version were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic. (slantmagazine.com) The source material comes from two Radiohead albums, “Kid A” and “Amnesiac,” both originally released in 2000 and 2001, and from artwork made by Thom Yorke and longtime visual collaborator Stanley Donwood during that period. (thequietus.com) Director Sean Evans built the new version as a large-format film and exhibition space instead of a concert, so fans walk into a controlled room with surround sound rather than wait at an outdoor stage for a set time. (desertsun.com) That makes it a strange fit for Coachella on paper, because the festival is still anchored by headline performances from artists including Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber, and Karol G across two April weekends. (coachella.com) But Coachella has spent years expanding beyond band schedules into permanent-feeling attractions, and the Los Angeles Times framed the Radiohead bunker as one of the acts festivalgoers most wanted to see before weekend one even started. (latimes.com) Radiohead is also using Coachella as the launch point for a tour, not a one-off stunt. After the California debut, “Motion Picture House: KID A MNESIA” is scheduled to travel to a small run of North American cities for limited engagements. (jambands.com) So the festival slot is doing two jobs at once. It gives Coachella a destination hidden beneath the field, and it gives Radiohead a ready-made crowd of tens of thousands to introduce an exhibition that was first imagined years ago and only now exists in physical form. (musically.com)
